World Heritage Site inscription and city tourism attractiveness on national holidays

New evidence with migration big data from China

Bibliographic Data

ID21698535
AuthorsYanyan Gao (0000-0003-0326-504X, Southeast University, corresponding author), Mengyun Fang (Southeast University), Yongqing Nan (0000-0002-3644-5322, Nanjing Audit University), Wei Su (0000-0003-2204-3418, School of Hospitality Management, Nanjing Institute of Tourism and Hospitality, Nanjing, People’s Republic of China)
Year2023
Volume26
Issue12
Pages1956-1973
Publication date2023-06-18
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessNo
TypeARTICLE
VenueCurrent Issues in Tourism (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 1368-3500 • E-ISSN: 1747-7603
PublisherInforma UK Limited (PUBLISHER • GB)
DOI10.1080/13683500.2022.2073203
OpenAlexW4280539475
LanguageEN
Citations received7
References cited54

World Heritage Site (WHS) inscription has been considered as a certification of tourism quality since it is designated to properties with outstanding universal value. While it is hypothesised that the title can raise tourism attractiveness through signalling tourism quality, empirical evidence remains highly mixed. This paper tries to identify the causal effect by using unique daily city-pair tourist flow intensities from Tencent migration big data on two Chinese national holidays between 2015 and 2019 and constructing multi-dimensional fixed effects panel data models. We find that the WHS inscription does raise city tourism attractiveness. One WHS increases tourist inflow intensity by at least 6.7% up to around 10%. The tourism-enhancing effect is consistent under many robustness checks and displays some notable heterogeneity effects in terms of holiday types, days within each holiday and high-speed rail connections. These results suggest that WHS inscription could be a valid tourism quality signal used by tourism administrations to enhance city tourism attractiveness

Advertising · Attractiveness · Business · Certification · China · Econometrics · Economic geography · Economics · Geography · Panel data · Regional science · Tourism · Diverse Aspects of Tourism Research · Economic and Environmental Valuation · Psychology · Urban Transport and Accessibility · Marketing

Tools

Open DOI